Category: Uncategorized

Got this comment from /.

Definitely. American companies put way too much HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) in their products, and it’s nasty stuff. About two years ago I decided to avoid HFCS, but still eat sweets like I normally would. Ie, I still ate ice cream, cookies, sodas, cereal, etc, but only those brands that use cane sugar instead of HFCS. You can get good products at places like Whole Foods (pricy) or Trader Joes (similar price or even cheaper than a supermarket). [In fact, Trader Joes cereals, which don’t have HFCS, are cheaper than the corresponding kinds from Kelloggs and General Mills which do have HFCS.] Anyway, the interesting result is that, without meaning to, I lost about 15 pounds while still eating all the desserts I wanted, just by avoiding HFCS!.

One thing is that HFCS seems to do is inhibit the ‘full’ feeling you get after eating, so you can eat more if your food has HFCS. Great news for food companies, not good news for American health.

It is annoying because food with real sugar just tastes much better, and is healthier. In most other countries products like Coca-Cola has cane sugar, but here in the USA all products substitute HFCS. I once emailed Coca-Cola about this a few years ago, they said it’s up to local bottlers to decide which sweetener to use. And of course they cut corners and go for the cheap stuff.

Some companies use this to their advantage because ignorant people see CORN instead of SUGAR and think the product is healthier. Ie, Kelloggs Corn Pops used to be called Sugar Pops. By making the change, parents thought Corn sounded much healthier than sugar, so they have no problem giving this cereal to their kids, when it has the same amount of calories, yet uses HFCS instead of cane or beet sugar.

Unfortunately midwestern corn farmers have alot of political power, and politicians, aiming for approval in the early Iowa primaries, are likely to bow down to these farmers in order to get the party nomination. The corn lobby has huge power, both political and economical, and they choose to market HFCS instead of doing something productive such as growing biofuels with the corn instead.

Another thing is that it’s more expensive to import and use cane sugar than to process corn into HFCS. I am not certain of this, but I would theorize that one big factor is due to the embargo we put on Cuba after Castro came to power in 1959. Cuba was a huge source of cane sugar (their chief export), so the embargo basically crippled their economy overnight and impeded a huge source of sugar cane into the USA. So corn farmers, along with massive chemical processing to produce the HFCS, filled the void.

Anyway, that is my rant, I hate HFCS, and it’s good to see more people becoming aware of it. I really do think that just by substituting cane sugar for HFCS there will be a notable change in America’s obesity problem. It probably won’t cure the problem, but I think there would be definite effects.

There were many interesting things from this comments and several highly doubtful things. I’ve bolded the things which I found interesting. However, I was interested in the High Fructose Corn Syrup and was wondering it there has been any studies regarding this. Sugar coated – We’re drowning in high fructose corn syrup. Do the risks go beyond our waistline? (from ungsunghero):

Other studies by researchers at UC Davis and the University of Michigan have shown that consuming fructose, which is more readily converted to fat by the liver, increases the levels of fat in the bloodstream in the form of triglycerides.

And unlike other types of carbohydrate made up of glucose, fructose does not stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin. Peter Havel, a nutrition researcher at UC Davis who studies the metabolic effects of fructose, has also shown that fructose fails to increase the production of leptin, a hormone produced by the body’s fat cells.

Both insulin and leptin act as signals to the brain to turn down the appetite and control body weight. And in another metabolic twist, Havel’s research shows that fructose does not appear to suppress the production of ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger and appetite.

“Because fructose in isolation doesn’t activate the hormones that regulate body weight as do other types of carbohydrate composed of glucose, consuming a diet high in fructose could lead to taking in more calories and, over time, to weight gain,” he says.

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Random Crap:

Library Seat in Main Stacks for Sale (berkeley) (from chewydenise) – Its Finals week! Thinking of studying in the main stacks but don’t want to walk around for minutes/hours/days looking for a seat? Well my seat is up for sale! It is on level C main stacks, in the big tables. I have a lamp next to me and an outlet great for charging laptops/cellphones/ipods/vibrators or any electronic device you might use. The spot also includes a chair. I will even throw in an energy drink. I will set the price at 5 dollars or best offer. I can take pics with my camara phone so email me if you want to see pics. This is PRIME REAL ESTATE.

Control the Show (from Microsoft newsgroup) – This site merges many aspects of technology and fun into an interactive Christmas light controller. That’s right! You can control the Christmas lights on my house. Using the web interface YOU can control the light schemes and spread a bit of holiday cheer on to everyone else watching the show online or to visitors driving by. The system will come online each night in the evening at 5:30pm EST until midnight.

Phony Photo Booth at Universal Studios – a hilarious clip from Jay Leno of how far people will go just to get a free photo. They don’t even question technology. I’ve seen this a long time ago, but it’s hilarious to see it again. Make sure you see the last one!

Kotaku – xbox 360 japan launch guide – interesting turn of events makes the Xbox360 not a sell-out in Japan. In fact, the stores are overstock with them. I wondering what’s going to happen now…

Lineage II Movies (from tera) – some really cool animations and videos of the game Lineage II. Check it out. The Lineage II animals are so cute:

Meebo (from /.) – a pretty neat AJAX application. Allows you sign on to any IM client (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, or GTalk) without downloading any client and all with a nice and easy to interface. Only thing I’m worried is the privacy issues. Who knows if they’re going to be storing my password or recording my conversations. Of course they say they won’t and it looks like the password passing is encrypted, but still, it worries me that I have to go through a 3rd party site.

DKNY Men’s Leather Pants I Unfortunately Own (from mandalayx) – a really funny eBay auction. Be sure to also check ou the Q&A on the bottom. It’s even funnier!

Got several videos from thatvideosite.com:

• Revenge of the Sith Easter Egg: Yoda dancing
• Conan kisses Rebecca Romijn
• More awesome christmas lights – I finally found the 2nd song of Carson Williams’ christmas lights. Only one I’m missing is Frosty the Snowman.
• Hahahaha. Milk. – Guys will do anyting to reduce the symptoms of PMS.

Just wanted to say happy birthday to my buddy Mechy!

teapot cake (image from lsiymle)

Wanted to post more, my queue of blog entries is at 6 partially written, but I’m too tired today so g’nite (^_^x)zzZZ

Microsoft’s CSD (Connected Systems Division) held their annual Christmas Party today. Attire was formal, though we did see some people with sweaters and jeans, but I guess that’s just Microsoft or programmers in general. I was told the minimum I could wear was at least a jacket or tie, so I went for the cheaper route, the tie. While I started my laundry today (I was out of pants to wear), I went to Ross stores and picked up a tie. I was expecting to pay more, but the tie only cost $10. w00t! Also picked up a belt cause I can’t find my old one either for yet another whopping $10. Haha. I already had plenty of dress shirts and slacks and a pair of dress shoes, so that was taken care of. The final outcome:

I actually forgot how to tie a tie, and after googling it, the first linke was: Learn How to Tie a Tie. The instructions were pretty clear, but my first attempt ended up with the tail being longer than the head (tail = narrow end and head = wide end). But my 2nd attempt is what you see above. I went with the easy Windsor Knot. Hehe.

I was going to take pictures at the party, but I got lazy and I didn’t really know a lot of people there. Guess I just didn’t get comfortable enough to start shooting, but Asaf took a lot pictures. The food was pretty good. We had tons of weird stuff like crab cakes and shrimp paste cream puffs and salmon pieces and honey ham and different cheese sampling and etc etc. Of course they had better names than that, but I don’t really remember them. Got to see Vani, Tekman and his wife Angel, Derek and his wife Shanna, Jeremy, Rakesh, Asaf and his wife, Eric and his wife, Mark, let’s see… Oh yah Don and his wife. I think that’s how you spell his name, such a cool name though!

The party was held at Museum of Flight, right smack in the middle of the Boeing fields. It was really neat. We got to check the exhibitions for free. Even got to ride on the flight simulators and virtual reality things for free. There was pool tables and ice hockey tables. They also hired professional casino people to host and there was poker, black jack, pai gow, craps, roulette, etc etc. Each person started off with $2000 (fake money). I think I left the poker table with $3000 (with my peak around $5000). When you’re playing with fake money, it’s so much easier to make calls. Hehe. Back to the museum, they had exhibitions like the Blackbird. X-Men had a plane called the Blackbird and it actually resembles this quite a bit, so I’m thinking they got their idea from here. I didn’t even know it was a real airplane! Also the ex-Air Force One is supposedly here too, but I didn’t get to check it out. So if you’re in Seattle and interested in airplanes, the Museum of Flight is definitely a place to visit.

Since it was open bar, and there wasn’t anything besides coffee and water and soda to drink, I ended up getting 2 drinks. I got a Screwdriver followed by a Whiskey Sour. Both were bleh. After my 2nd drink, I decided that bottle water was the way to go. Plus I needed to drive home later that night. I could’ve gotten a taxi voucher, but would need a way to come back tomorrow to pick up my car.

All in all, I had a great time. Everyone got to dress up fancy, for a change (We are Microsoftites, and rumor is we don’t know how to dress). Vani actually came in a Sari (Saree) which was really pretty. Jeremy joked beforehand when we went to The Keg earlier this week (or was it last week) that he would wear one too. Tekman said it would be too terrified to see, but I chimed in and said I’d like to see it. The guys that work around me are so cool!

What shocked all of us was the number of Lambourghinis and Ferraris that parked there tonight. Although, the CSD probably contains about 800 or so people with several high executives, the number of fancy cars were beyond my expectation. The group of us joked that either there are many high level executives here tonight or they aren’t paying us enough. Hehe. On our way out, Derek joked and asked me which Ferrari did I drive here with today. I replied the Ferrari that looks like a Civic.

San Francisco police suspended over video sketch – San Francisco is suspending 20 police officers who participated in video sketches portraying police ogling women, ducking emergency calls and going to a massage parlor on duty. I really wanted to see the videos, but they were already taken down from InsideTheSFPD.com by the time I found the site. Google nor any search engine had a cache on it either. Right now all the site has is a statement of thanking support.

After searching the web for a while, I did fine some of the videos, but they were videos of videos (meaning someone took a camera and shot at the computer screen):

Producer Responds To SFPD Video Scandal
SFPD Officers Suspended over Online Video

There seems to be 6 videos in all and several clips and several news stories and interviews with Daniel Horowitz, Andrew Cohen’s lawyer. Andrew Cohen was the person who filmed it. During the interview with Horowitz, lots of stuff he was arguing about didn’t really make sense and seemed actually more like stretching the truth. You should watch the interview and let me know what you think. I personally think the videos were in bad taste, although I agree there were some funny parts. But one of the stupidest arguments Horowitz was defending was the fact that Cohen did not distribute it publically and it was the mayor and police chief’s fault for blowing this beyond proportions. But all these videos were posted on a website and ONLY some of the police officers knew the web address. Personally, anything published on the world wide web that doesn’t require authentication should be considered releasing to public, even IF the search engines haven’t crawled to it yet. I actually found Horowitz trying to make his point a lot funnier than the videos themselves.

If anyone has access to the real video files or know where to get them, please let me know (by leaving a comment).

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Random Crap:

Tortoise Adopts Baby Hippo (from deadlock) – I posted this story from Yahoo! some time back but this one has more cute pictures so I thought I’d share again.

The top 10 weirdest USB drives ever (from /.) – I’m actually not too satisfied with this list. Most of the items listed were just USB jump drives in weird shapes. I’d rather see the top 10 weirdest groups of USB devices, so usb storage may be one group and usb lamps or fans or phone chargers could be other groups. There was this really tiny USB flash drive that was interesting: iDisk Diamond, even in your ear. It’s so tiny, it smaller than my finger print! Quite easy to lose also I presume.

Car crash, heavy traffic turn out Christmas light show (from deadlock) – Sheriff’s deputies asked the owner who lit up his house with 25,000 Christmas lights synched to music to turn off the display after a traffic accident Tuesday night. Deerfield Twp. resident Carson Williams agreed to shut down his holiday decorations indefinitely. Too bad the musical christmas lights are no longer up for display. The display caught attention across the nation on network TV and on the Internet because the lights on the Williams house and filling their yard are synchronized by computer with music broadcast to car radios. There are three songs in the 12-minute display: Frosty the Snowman by the Jackson 5; God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood and Wizards of Winter by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Does anyone know if the other 2 songs have been captured and placed online? I’d really like to see it.

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (押忍！闘え！応援団) (from Microsoft Newsgroup) – It appears to be a new game for the Nintendo DS that seems to be a cheerleading game. You can read IGN’s review on it. Check out this video of the gameplay. At first I thought this was another one of those DDR spin offs like what they have for drums and guitars and dancing nowadays, but once I figured it was for the DS, the video made a lot more sense when those bubbles and arrows popped out. Not exactly sure how drawing those lines and connecting those dots really reflect cheerleading, but I heard it was a lot of fun. The song they’re using in the video is actually Full Metal Alchemist opening.

Got this from a Microsoft newsgroup:

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December.

Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring…

Therefore, according to every historical rendition depicting Santa’s reindeer, every single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen had to be a girl. We should have known…

Only women would be able to drag a fat-ass man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost!

I learn this fact from Jeremy, a friend from work. Lymph Nodes are like white blood cell graveyards, which I found fascinating. That’s why they swell up when you get really sick. Dead white blood cells accumulate there and when you’re really sick, a lot of white blood cells die. What’s worse is that white blood cells takes germ and disease cells with them to the grave, so you end up with a big hodgepot of diseases and germs. Interesting right?

Speaking of which, deadlock gave me this video today: Mechanism of action for new cancer therapy. It’s quite a fascinating new way to treat cancer cells. Even though it can only kill 2/3 of the cancerous cells, that can easily reduce a stage 3 or 4 cancer to stage 1 or 2. You can find more 3d animations here: BioDigital Systems 3D Animation Gallery.

This entry should’ve been written several days ago, but I just got side-tracked. My officemate and neighbors who worked on Windows Server 2003 R2 shipped earlier this week and decided to celebrate. I didn’t really ship yet, but I joined in the fun with Derek, Jeremy, Tekman, and Vani. We went to The Keg Steakhouse & Bar in Kirkland and it was a mighty fancy place. To give you a perspective how how fancy this place is, it’s rated a 9.0 while the Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Seattle is rated a 9.2. However rumor is the best, but also the most expensive steak house around here, is most definitely the Metropolitan Grill, which recieved a score of 9.7. The food was delicious, but I think steak houses have a tendancy of undercooking their meat. I ordered a medium rare prime rib, which was really delicious, but it was awfully pink. We had a great time. What was neat is that first time comers get a free shrimp cocktail appetizer and the manager himself comes to your table thanking you and asking what brings us to The Keg today. The service was awesome also. One way to tell how good the service is how many times your glass of water becomes empty. I don’t think my glass of water ever became empty that night.

Speaking of food, here’s a word of advice, DO NOT BOIL YOUR EGGS STARTING WITH BOILING WATER. I was boiling some yam tonight and halfway through, I thought I’d dump in 2 eggs so I can have boiled eggs too. BAD MISTAKE. Almost immediately upon impact with the boiling water, the eggs cracked and started leaking white goo. So yah.. that’s my advice for today.

Got this off bittorrent:

Click on Full Size to get the 9372×9372 image. Warning: The image is 14megs!

I first read this article: Pakistan orders Bush poem deleted from school book. I tried to google for the poem and found this article: Veiled ode to George Bush deleted from Pakistani textbooks . Pakistan has ordered that a poem in which the first letters of each line spell out the name “President George W. Bush” be deleted from a school textbook. The Education Ministry said the poem “The Leader” was unacceptable as it had been downloaded from the Internet and was anonymous.

Part of the poem was displayed in the 2nd article, but that didn’t sound too bad, so I googled some more and found the real poem:

THE LEADER by anonymous

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn’t afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn’t conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won’t do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he’s right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won’t hear.
Growing in strength he won’t be unnerved,
Ever assuring he’ll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.

I also found a similar poem at Daily Kos: Sycophant Poem touting "Powerful bush" in Pakistani schoolbooks:

THE FEEDER by citizen bronte

Petulant piques which we all must bear,
Ready to sidestep every challenge with care,
Easy to manipulate, slippery as an eel,
Strong in his sect, he obnoxiously deals.
Isn’t afraid to propose what is doled,
Doesn’t mind handing out favors to cajole,
Eyes that have forsaken, hindsight won’t do,
Never reviews all the history so true,
Tells it all jumbled, spins it all too.
Going ever backward only wanting to fight,
Even in doubt he never listens to right,
Over and over he makes mistakes so clear,
Reaching to punish the ones who won’t veer.
Growing in doubt he won’t be unnerved,
Ever ensuring his mistakes are preserved.
Wanting the world to kneel at his feet,
Bringing world war and creating deceit,
Using his powers so evil can’t cease.
So such a leader is unworthy of trust,
Here stands a man whose legacy is disgust.

*A feeder is someone, usually (but not necessarily) male, in a relationship with a feedee. As the name suggests, the feeder provides the feedee with an abundant supply of food, either to encourage weight gain or simply for delight in the act of feeding.

There’s been a lot of debate in our newsgroup regarding if speed limits really help make safer drivers and if it really saves lives. I got the following quote from /. and I found it quite interesting. Then again, those little white signs with the numbers on it are just recommendations, right?

Look, traffic engineers know, and have known for a very long time, that the safest speed to set speed limits at is the 85% percentile speed: the speed which 85% of the free-flowing traffic on that particular road travels at or below. This is because the large majority of drivers are reasonable and prudent, and while they wish to reach their destination in a short amount of time, they also wish to remain alive and unwrecked.

If traffic engineers want this speed on a stretch of hypothetical road to drop, they do this by changing the road surface. Narrows, curves, crests, inclines, will all reduce the 85th percentile speed.

Setting a speed limit lower than the 85th percentile speed doesn’t reduce the speed at which traffic flows. I’m going to repeat that again, because it sounds vaguely important:

Changing the speed limit doesn’t change how fast people drive [state.tx.us]. The safe speed for a road is determined by the road design and the road conditions, and *not* by some arbitrary number on a sign.

The notion that traveling at the posted limit +5 is more dangerous than traveling at the posted limit, or than traveling at the posted limit -5, is reasonable only if the posted limit reflects the 85% percentile speed.

Sometimes it does. Some states even have it written into their laws that that’s how speed limits are determined.

But more often it does not. More often, speed limits are set artificially low, in order to provide a source of revenue for the state. If you set a speed limit below the 85% percentile speed, people will generally ignore it, drive at the speed dictated by road conditions and their ability, and then you can ticket them for speeding.

Here are the actual conclusions of that study I linked to just above:

Effects of Raising and Lowering Speed Limits

Based on the free-flow speed data collected for a 24-h period at the experimental and comparison sites in 22 States, posted speed limits were set, on the average, at the 45th percentile speed or below the average speed of traffic

At sites where speed limits were raised, there was an increase of less than 1.5 mi/h (2.4 km/h) for drivers traveling at and below the 75th percentile speed. When the posted limits were raised by 10 and 15 mi/h (16 and 24 km/h), there was a small decrease in the 99th percentile speed.

Raising speed limits in the region of the 85th percentile speed has an extremely beneficial effect on drivers complying with the posted speed limits.

Lowering speed limits in the 33rd percentile speed (the average percentile that speed were posted in this study) provides a noncompliance rate of approximately 67 percent.

Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent. The level of confidence of this estimate is 44 percent. The 95 percent confidence limits for this estimate ranges from a reduction in accidents of 11 percent to an increase of 26 percent.

Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent. The level of confidence of this estimate in 59 percent. The 95 percent confidence limits for this estimate ranges from a reduction in accidents of 21 percent to an increase of 10 percent.

Lowering speed limits more than 5 mi/h (8 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed of traffic did not reduce accidents.